 So, welcome to the Dr. Gundry podcast. You know, have you ever tried something new only to realize you weren't very good at it and then you gave up, actually pretty quickly? Or maybe you skipped something altogether because you were afraid of looking foolish. That sounds more like me. If you answered yes, then this podcast is for you. In just a moment, I'm going to speak with writer, publisher, my publisher, I must disclose breast cancer survivor and in her words, mediocre surfer, Karen Rinaldi. Karen, who has published multiple best-selling books on health and wellness, including the Plant Paradox and the Longevity Paradox by yours truly, says we live in an era of aspirational psychosis. Boy, if you don't turn in to hear about aspirational psychosis, I don't know what's going to catch you. In other words, we prioritize success over play, in fact, success over almost everything and avoid trying things we're likely to struggle at and it's hurting us actually a lot more than we know. So in her new book, it's great to suck at something. Karen reveals the pitfalls of playing it safe and why perfection is overrated. Today she's going to share with us what she's learned by embracing and even celebrating her shortcomings. This is going to be fun. And how opening yourself up to failure can ultimately help you to live a happier, healthier and more fulfilling life. Karen, thanks for joining us. I always see you in New York City and I'm happy to have you out here in LA. I'm thrilled to be in your home, so thank you. So you talk about taking up surfing at age 40. Why did you get in the water at age 40? I'd always wanted to surf my whole life and I was terrified. I was terrified of getting out in the ocean, of losing purchase with the bottom and being out past the break, which you have to do when you surf. And when I had children, strangely, I became less afraid or really the old fears were replaced by new fears. So I was no longer afraid to try. So that was part of it, just to try. The other thing is that because I had wanted to surf, I didn't want to get to the other side of my life and say, I've never done it. So I took one lesson and I thought, okay, I'm going to take one lesson and that's it. I might just get it out of the way. But at least I will have pushed through that fear and tried. I think part of the fear factor, too, is that I had babies, I was filled with oxytocin, which is a fear inhibitor, and I think really I became sort of more fierce in a way. And I thought, I can do this, so I took one lesson and that one lesson changed my entire life. And then after that one lesson, and this is going to sound completely, it's a reveal, a little bit of insanity, but we're going to talk about that, it took me five years to actually catch a wave. And I don't mean to surf in the white water and catch little tiny inside waves and stuff, but five years to paddle out, to paddle into a wave, to drop in, turn, you know, ride the face of a wave, kick out, five years of trying. And it was the most fulfilling, one of the most fulfilling things I've ever done besides having children. Five years? Five years is too long for anybody to be reasonable about, keep trying. But what I realized is that the process of it, getting off of terra firma, getting out in the water, partly where no one could reach me, you're going to a place- Including your kids? Including my kids, yes. Absolutely. Well, just weird, no one could reach me and ask anything of me, and something I did just for myself. There was no reasonable reason to surf, right? We do it for pleasure. And that's true of a lot of hobbies that we do. You can see what the effects are, whether it's for your health or for a nimble or mind. But I think that distraction from what is calling to your obligations, your responsibility and the things that you embrace and want to do, but getting away from that, having a respite to me brought me so many gifts and the waves became the bonus. And I stopped pushing to say, I have to succeed at this because trying is really where I'm getting a lot of, a lot of the good stuff is hiding. And that started the whole process of the suck at something kind of really philosophy in my head. So you literally aren't very good. This is not humble bragging. I'm really not good. In fact, I posted, I had an essay in the New York Times a couple years ago, and I wrote about sucking at surfing. People thought, oh yeah, Karen surfs all the time. She goes on these trips and she talks about it. She has a really good language around it. She knows a lot of surfers. And so people just assumed that I said I sucked at it and I was being humble. And what I did when I wrote that piece is I put up a video which I had never dared to do before. And I went, you know what? You're just going to have to go all the way. And I put up a video of me surfing. And I mean, I surf the wave, but I'm a kook. But a colleague came into my office and she said, wow. So you really do suck at surfing. And I said, yeah, I do. And I said, how does that make you feel? She goes, it kind of makes me happy. And I said, I understand that. She's like, yeah, I thought you were so cool and you did this thing. And I said, no, I'm not, and I don't do it to be cool. And it just, it was the best exchange. I didn't, I wasn't insulted by it. I went, yes. And then you two can try something and suck at it, put a video up above it. Invite the world in. So because you weren't very good at it, was that an impetus for you to keep trying? Just, I mean, if you mastered it instantly, maybe go, yeah, that's fine. And maybe I'll try something else. I mean, the point of your book is, you know. It's great to suck at something. So my, my, yes, exactly. So if I had been really good at it, right? I think things that come easily to us, which I don't know, not that many things come easy to me. Maybe it's, I tend to do them, but I'm not as aware, right? I don't have the, the extreme awareness, the mindfulness that it takes to, to concentrate on something that's always new, right? So novelty, novelty is good for our brains. It's good for our nervous system. We need it. Without novelty, we would have never progressed. We wouldn't have become civilized, you know, more or less. And I think that novelty has a certain balance in our, in our minds, right? So when you're really good at something, you kind of have an expectation that, yeah, you, I mean, okay, one of the things I was really good at when I was a kid is I was good at languages. And French came really easily to me. And I loved it. I loved it. And I did it. And I studied it. You know what? I didn't study it hard enough. Because I thought, ah, I got this. It's easy. And I didn't have that discipline. Surfing has been, is the hardest physical thing I've ever done. And I think because of that, it's always new. I'm always present. You have to be so present. I'm always, I'm always grateful. Because I just to be in the ocean and be doing it. And if you, if it's your, you know, throwing pottery, you know, sitting at the potter's wheel. Like, you're grateful for the, for the privilege of being able to do it. And you're always having to learn. And that sense of novelty never goes away. And it's a, it's a very, okay, so it sounds counterintuitive, but it's an empowering feeling. If you accept that you might suck at it. Then that's, that's undergirding all. This is that, is a lot of self-acceptance and self-compassion about sucking at something. Which is part of, another part of the story. So, so, all right. So you, you get in the water at age 40 and you're horrible at it. But now, you know, fast forward 15 years later, you serve eight out of 12 months a year. I do. I try to get in the water. And you travel to exotic surf spots and spend a lot of money on boards. And yet you just aren't very good at this. A little irresponsible, yes. Why do you keep doing it? Well, so my dad asked me that once. He would come up and watch me. We lived by the ocean in New Jersey. And he would come up and watch me, you know, years ago. And he'd say, why do you, just like that? Why do you do it? Why do you keep doing it? And I said, because it taught, it teaches me so, I get so much more out of it than just the act of surfing. I mean, what, everything around it. So I'm in nature. I am in the ocean which I am both terrified of and also love and want to be in as much as possible. And so that tension to me makes me feel very alive all the time. You, okay, and this is all surfing, but I think you can apply this to everything, to any sport, to any hobby, to a musical instrument, to dance too. But I think the thing, I keep trying because in that trying, I learn a lot about myself. And I've had to come to grips with this idea of usually when we do things, we do it because we have a goal in mind, we have a reward in mind. We really think that I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna get something back. It's transactional. When you let go of that goals mindset, reward mindset, the transactional mindset, and then you just be, you learn a lot about yourself. You learn about how to forgive yourself when you screw it up. You learn how to have humility because when you're doing something and when you're doing something in a community, people around you are often better than you are. And so to keep putting yourself in a community where you're not the one who's good at it, is very humbling, which isn't a bad thing. One of the other things that would happen is because I was so bad at it, nobody ever asked me for anything about serving. Nobody wanted to know what I knew because I didn't know. And what it invited, and this is one of the most beautiful parts about, I think sucking at something, is that when you're not good at something, it invites kindness and assistance from others to help you. And you have to be open, humble enough and also acknowledge that you need that help. And I think so many of us are like, I got this, I don't need help, I'm an expert, I can tell you what to do, I know it has to get done. We think we're in control of things. And then you let go of that control, you let go of being the expert and the master in what comes in its place, is kindness from others and self-acceptance and self-compassion. And a lot of beautiful stuff is hiding underneath this failure. And we don't, instead of pathologizing that failure, we celebrate it and we learn from it. I think that's a great point. And it actually reminds me of something that happened a few weeks ago to Penny, my wife, and I, when we were in Ethiopia with Charity Water. And on the last day, there is this mountain, for lack of a better word, that they invite you to climb because there's a church carved into the rock that you can only reach by literally climbing the mountain. And they told us it was a moderate difficulty hike. It was not a moderate difficulty hike. It was actually a dangerous climb. There were ledges that you could fall to your deaths and there were holds anyhow. They had Sherpas, Ethiopian Sherpas to guide us and both Penny and I, I can do this, I can do this. No, I don't want your hand. And these guys would initially say, okay, put your foot here, here's the handhold. And as it got steeper and steeper and more and more treacherous, we're to the point now that, boy, do we really trust our push and am I gonna fall? So Penny was actually ahead and her Sherpa offered her hand and she had been pushing it away and she finally grabbed his hand and she used his hand to help her up and I kept pushing it away. And I finally said, no, this is getting past my comfort and I started using his hand and she got up to the top. She said, you know, that was one of the most interesting things that's ever happened to me. She said, I had to trust another person who I did not know that could get me through this and I said, you know, you're right. And I said, I had to trust that you knew what you were doing to trust that person. Otherwise I would have just, probably would have turned around. It was that difficult and wow. So anyhow, so we got, yeah. But that's it. So the exchange is not only going up the mountain and then getting through it and seeing this amazing church happiness experience. It was the way you communed with these people who you probably will never even see again, right? No. You probably will never see them again but you will remember that part of it and if that's not a reason to suck at something, I don't know what is, you know. Well, I suck at skiing. I actually, And you ski? I do ski. I learned to ski at 42. Oh, do you know what this is about? I had never been on, and my wife Penny is an excellent skier started at three. And so, you know, I'm horrible at it but I know exactly what you're saying and I keep going back. So why? Because once you kind of get underway, I guess. Yes. Then, you know, you're communing with the mountain, you're enjoying gravity downhill except when you break your thumb or things like that but we won't go into that. Yeah. But one of the really interesting things that we ski mostly Deer Valley in Utah Salt Lake City. And there's this hill that's, it's a blue, maybe a double blue that you kind of have to get down to get where you wanna end up but there's a safe path, a little green to go around it and Penny of course would always, you know, go down and I'd do the green path meter down there and she'd be waiting for me. And I kept saying year after year, I've gotta get to the point where I can go down that hill. And finally, I think I must have been eight years before I could get probably not the skill set, I probably always had the skill set but the ability to say, I can get down this hill and it makes such a difference. I didn't get down the hill well, I still don't but now I go down the hill. And do you feel frustrated by it sometimes or do you have to practice, I mean, not to point the question but do you have to practice not feeling frustrated or do you, have you let that go and you just enjoy what you can do as opposed to expecting? Oh yeah, I mean, I'm a broad-footed skier and I just laugh at myself silly because Penny's like this and she's beautiful going down that hill. I wanna see some video of that. Oh, it's just hilarious but I get down the hill and it's probably like you run on a surfboard. Totally, it's me on a surfboard. I just making the wave is enough and every once in a while I know what to do on it and that's great but I have to let go. See, I do a lot of the practice of this and I think that's a kind of a discipline but I say sucking at something takes practice is what I say a lot that we're one of the refrains in the book because I have to practice being okay with it because I can get hard on myself. Now I will paddle out sometimes and I get hammered. I mean, I have been, I try to surf bigger and bigger waves but I've gone in places where I just, I can't handle it and I have to forgive myself for not being able to handle it and then sometimes just getting hammered and then just getting spit back to shore and just say, okay, it's too big for me and not getting upset with myself for not being able to do it so there's that constant I am, it is again, it's new, it's novel, it's always, so that's the thing about sucking at something is that it's not, you're gonna get better, you're gonna be able to go down the double blue without going the way of the green, you're gonna be able to do it, you might not do it, it might not be beautiful and I'm gonna be able to surf bigger waves and more waves but even when I make that wave and I surf it well, I wanna get another one, I wanna get a bigger one, I wanna surf it better so that sucking at something is like, there's an idea that people say, why would you wanna be bad at something? It's like, well, it's basically it's like, who's not, who doesn't need to improve? I mean, pro surfers of which there are like, what, 30 or 40 on the world tour have coaches, right? So I think there's this idea that things should be easy and my point is nothing's easy, people make certain things look easy and those are the people who are the experts but things are so much harder and if you say, yes, it's hard and then forgive yourself for the struggle and then have fun with the struggle and then always know that you're gonna get better but then you're gonna suck compared to the next person and then you go, yeah, I'm okay with that, there's always gonna be somebody better and I can have this mindset that helps me keep doing it, finding the joy in it and all the benefits in it. So is it good to suck at something? Is that what you're implying? I am saying absolutely because what it teaches you, if you say everything, I mean, let's just hypothetically say that there is someone for whom, I can't imagine what this would be, everything came easily and I know that there are certain people, we look at others, we go, oh yeah, that person's beautiful and talented and everything they do is so good and why am I not that person? If you really talk to that person and one of the things that I've had really fun doing is talking to people and saying to experts and saying you are lauded as being x, y, and z and something and people don't see your flaws like what do you suck at? So my thing is that it's a great counterbalance. So I think a lot of our lives is about reaching balance, that's true physiologically, it's true emotionally and psychically and that if you say, okay, I am driven all the time towards this goal, towards being an expert, towards being really good at what you do, you have to be good as a doctor, you don't have to be good as a skier and you know what, there's freedom and relief and beauty in that balance. So my thing is that you cut yourself off to so much experience by not allowing yourself to suck at something because, and this is the other key thing, is that what sucking at something teaches you as well on the other side is that for the things you are good at, the things you do excel at, you're a doctor, I'm a publisher, I'm really good at, I'm a good cook, right? I cook, I'm an awesome cook and I cook a lot. But you know what, sometimes I make crap food, like sometimes I just blow it and instead of getting kind of beating myself up for it or sometimes I'll make a decision in publishing and put your fingers in your ears, but that isn't maybe the best decision and I have to say, okay, I know what that looks like and instead of getting all freaked out and what people do, they blame somebody else and they make excuses and they try to hide behind it, you go, yeah, you know what, I'm gonna learn from that instead and it really has taught me to accept my failing and failings at the things that really do matter, like my work and being a parent is probably one of the most important things any of us do, right? And man, I don't always get it right. And sucking at things that don't matter give you the tools to learn how to accept the mistakes and the failures that you make and the things that do matter. So that's why I think it's, yeah, that's why I think it's great to suck at something. That's why I think it's important to put yourself in that position so that you're not always the master because we're not. So you talk a lot about your struggles with breast cancer, your battle with it. Yeah, it's a chapter. And so, you're not going to catch waves. How did that help you in that time or did it? Well, you know, it was interesting when I was diagnosed and before the prognosis came in and then the prognosis kind of did a beat and switch so it was okay and then it got worse and then whatever, you know, things happen when you get sick. What was interesting about it is that I had two questions. The first one was like, oh, am I going to die? If I didn't want to die, that would suck. That would really suck. But besides that, and the second question was am I going to be able to surf again? And I thought, wow, that's interesting. I'm not asking myself, am I going to be able to, you know, lift weights, run, cook, you know, work? It was, was I going to be able to paddle out again? Like, what was that? And I thought, oh, that's interesting. So the thing I do the worst in my life is not, and it's too heavy to say that it's a reason to live because the reason to live is all the obvious reasons we know, you know, it would be first and foremost to be with my friends and family and loved ones. But besides that, the thing I did worse was one of the reasons why I wanted, not so much to live, of course, but to get better and stronger again. So I had this thing that I thought, all right, I got cancer, this is going to suck big time. And knowing that, this is interesting, I had, I did this weird calculus. So first year devastated because the diagnosis is devastating or going, oh, you know, and I thought, okay, I don't wanna have to go through this and be anxious and angry and all that. And I thought, well, I'm used to sucking at surfing. I know how to do that. I know how to go out in the waves and get hammered and get held down and lose my breath and not get to catch a wave and look like a fool and look horrible. And I was going, that's taught me a lot. Well, maybe having cancer is like an adventure. Maybe it's gonna be an adventure the same way that surfing is an adventure. And I'm gonna change that because I'm gonna enter a new world that I know nothing about, right? So then you're with your oncologist and your radiologist and your surgeons and your internist and your cardiologist and you've got a host of people. And what you do is all of a sudden you're moving, you're paddling out into a different universe. And instead of being terrified by it, I thought, well, I don't know anything here but I've got a lot to learn. And I'm gonna have to trust going back to your climb to that hill or mountain in Ethiopia, I'm gonna have to trust people to help get me there. So there's a surrender that when you suck at something and you keep doing it, you learn to surrender. And when you have cancer, you have to surrender a little bit to the care of experts. And then you have to fight to get strong again. And the surfing part really helped me to, and by the way, I had to start all over again. I had to start from the very beginning after that because I had so many surgeries and two rounds of chemo and it was a year of kicking my butt to the point where I felt like I was as close to dead as I've ever been, clearly. And then I said, four weeks, I'm gonna be in Costa Rica. I'm gonna go, I'm gonna surf. My family was like, I don't think you should do that. I was like, I'm getting in the water. I'm gonna surf. And you know what? Well, it's in the book, but yeah, I did it and it took me, and I had to start from the very beginning again because that was so weak. And you know what, two years later, I was not only back, but I got better at it. And I think I got better at it because it's like, yeah. You know what I mean? You're kind of going, I could. You're the female Lance Armstrong. Yeah, well, no, because he's actually, he's actually very good at what he does. This is me just getting back to sucking at it, but it didn't matter. My point was just doing it was enough pull for me to push through. In your book, you know, you talk about how we wanna dominate everything we try. Yeah. And if we aren't pros, we wanna abandon it and that means we avoid all these things that we aren't good at. So what does that say about us as a whole, our society? Well, I think we're told by the media and social media and you know, the kind of message is, you know, be the best or nothing at all. How many bests are there? How many of us are the best? I mean, maybe you, I'm not, I don't know. I'm not a good skier. You're not a good skier, well, exactly. So I think there's this, and also, you know, again, the aspirational psychosis stuff, and the fact of the matter is I publish these books and I do believe that in, you know, books that kind of inspire and push you to push through, you know, your fears and your limitations and the things that kind of the noise in your head, this is actually meant to do the same thing, but the idea is that we believe, we really believe that we're entitled to be good and succeed at everything. And I think that's the wrong message, experience, full stop. That's where value is, right? You can just put a period on that. And I think the message that we get, okay, so that's one thing, is that the message, the internal message, right? This myth of perfection, you know, perfectionism, there's, we've all heard this, it's like, well, you know, I'm such a perfectionist that, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, I can't complete that thing, I can't do that, or I haven't, or it's not as good as it should be. And that's like a weird, it's like a weird crutch, right? Like, the myth of perfectionism, right? So that's one of the things I wanna do in this book is just bust it. Because the fact of the matter of perfectionism and there are studies on this, it goes back to Adler, Alfred Adler is a psychologist, you know, but there are studies that are done on it now, but that our pursuit of perfection is actually, it's almost a pathology, right? So it starts, you know, you can call it, Sartre called it, you know, just wanting to be, you know, you want it to be perfect, want it to be the divine. It's our drive, because we need to strive and drive. That's a natural instinct. But we almost take it too far, and we wanna be perfect, and wanting to be perfect, it stops us from doing anything. If, you know, and it's just starting things in the first place. If we accept our imperfections, right? And you go, there are studies that basically say that those people who accept their imperfections are mentally healthier. They, you know, it prevents, you know, anxiety and depression disorders by accepting our imperfections. If you are striving to be perfect, it's going to put pressure on you, and you're not gonna be able to succeed, and you just think about it, you just bop yourself in. Like, you would never have another ski trip, and love, and have all that joy that you share, right? With your wife, if you were saying, until I get, until I'm really good on the slopes, right? I'm not going. And then that would be sad. You would be sad because, you know, she'd be up on the mountain, and you'd be in the lodge. I'd be doing the apreski, yeah, wait a minute. The apreski would get pouring over, it's good, but it's only apre, that counts, right? It's not the apreski. That's right, that's right. All right, so, guidelines for people who wanna get outside their comfort zone, wheelhouse? Yeah, so one of the things I prompt that I've been asking people is like, okay, cause people don't know where to start, cause they have a lot of anxiety about this, and they think, oh God, so there are a couple of things. So first, one of the ways to get started is to ask yourself questions, right? It's like, most of us grow up and say, how, you know, seeing people do things is like, oh, I would love, I've heard this a million times, I would love to do that. Do it, right? So the thing is like, don't do it and expect to be good at it. Do it once, do it once, try it. And you might go and you might say, oh, I've always wanted to, you know, I've always wanted to play an instrument. I took up a guitar, I liked it, and I sucked at it. But it didn't, it wasn't driving me to keep going when I took, when I surfed for that first time, I got that one, somebody pushed me in a way this big and I stumbled off, my bathing suit fell, I was a mess, I was a hot mess, and but I had that feeling of like, oh yeah, this is it. So my thing is like, try a lot of things and don't expect to love it, don't expect to, you might even be good at it, who knows, but and then don't be afraid to walk away and find something else, that's another thing. So you ask yourself, is there something that you've always wanted to do? And then start small, and don't start something where the barriers to entry are too high. I mean, I started surfing because I lived by the ocean. If I lived by a mountain, I might have started skiing, but I didn't, right? So I think your proximity and access is good because there's gonna be enough barriers by your own psyche, you don't wanna put other barriers in front of it. So what can somebody do today who's listening or watching to try to suck at something? Well, you know what? I always go back to this idea of let yourself fantasize about what you wanna do. And again, it could be singing, for example. I was just talking to somebody yesterday who took up guitar and singing after 40 or late in life. And it wasn't after 40, but it was later in life where it was like, you know, it's hard to learn a musical instrument or a language or something like that. And you just do it, you do it in stuff like that. You can just do it in your own home. You can do it quietly. You don't have to announce it. You don't have to commit to it. It's almost like all of the pressures that you usually feel to succeed, to commit to take a stand and say, I'm gonna do this. Instead, you just say, I'm gonna do it and I'm doing it for me. I don't have to succeed. And it's allow yourself to try it without pushing and making that full commitment. Because as soon as you say, I don't have to do this again, oh, but I want to, right? It's like letting yourself off the hook because we don't let ourselves off the hook for so many things. So that's a big cue. So can social media help with this? Okay, that's a really good question. So partly, I think social media, like everything else, there's a yin yang of it, right? So social media, that aspirational psychosis happens because in social media, we are framing and presenting the best, most awesome parts of ourselves, which is great because share the good stuff. I hope in my, I hope that I will start a little bit of a trend of saying, sharing what we're not good at. Not as a way, and here's the rule. The rule is you can't share, I can't share what you're not good at, you can't share what I'm not good at. You're just gonna, I'm gonna celebrate your skiing, you're gonna celebrate my surfing, we're gonna celebrate my friends, guitar playing and singing, but we can share our own fault lines and in doing that and learning to sort of be comfortable with that vulnerability and comfortable with that discomfort, I think, I mean, really what I think you invite is community and love and, you know. Yeah, I mean, and I won't mention any names, but there's a person who took up the lectin' free lifestyle and did it, bought an RV and started her Instagram feed about being, her being in an RV trying to do lectin' free and she became actually very popular, but she announced, I don't know anything about this. And you're gonna watch Ms. Dunlop. And you're gonna watch me do this. Yes. So that's why, and I, and it was, I think people liked it. I think it's great. I think it allows, I think by watching you struggle, by watching me struggle, it allows, you know, it allows for us to, again, to forgive ourselves for just not being, not being an expert. And I think that if we share more, we allow for that. And then, you know, all the, the other thing is like, you know, the haters online and because what goes, you know, there's the support groups that we find online and on social media, and then there are the trollers and the haters. And my thing is like somebody goes, you suck at something and you're going, yeah, I do. You take this thing out of it, right? That's true. You take away that power if you're going, yeah, you think it, what do you, so I suck at that, well, what do you suck at? There must be some, some troller who sucks at something, but actually they're pretty bad trollers. Well, there's pretty bad trollers. And I think that, honestly, I think that that is because they already feel, I mean, really the people who are doing that, the haters is really just externalizing something that they feel inside, which is sad, right? So I think in this practice, this practice is meant to sort of get on top of that and to try to give us some awareness at how we are so self-critical, right? And to try to be a little bit less self-critical. And then I think we actually judge others less when we do that. Okay, so what do you say to people who say, well, this is silly, you should, you know, you should really find things you're good at and concentrate on good at and don't waste your time on things you're bad at because it's a waste of time. It's just, it's the opposite of a waste of time because, again, what it does is what you're good at, you don't access the important stuff, which is tenacity, resilience, improvisation, grit. I mean, you can call it so many things, you know, self-compassion, interestingly, confidence. You know how confident, you know, you foster confidence by allowing yourself to fail and I know that's counterintuitive, but it's true. So if you only do what you're good at because you want people to see you as only being good at it, there is something sad about that, I think. So the idea is that, pursuing the things you're talented in, by the way, by all means, do that. I'm not saying, have everything, suck at everything in life. I'm saying one thing, pick a thing and then pick a thing and that's where you get to fail and where you get to forgive yourself and you learn these skills that are going to help you where in the places where your proclivities are sort of towards talent and that is going to make you better because even in the way in which you're talented, you're going to screw up but they're not gonna mess you up so much when you do that because you're gonna have had some practice over here where it doesn't matter as much. I think the other thing, to add to that is it's really good to laugh at yourself. Oh, failing. You know what, that is one of the great gifts in the world and laughing at yourself, again, not at others. You know what I mean? There is just such a relief in going, oh man, I have a story in the book where I do, I laugh at myself all the time in the water because I am such a poop. Well Karen, it's been great to have you actually in person on the podcast. Yes, I know, I'm thrilled to have you. How does the audience find you in the book? So the book goes on sale on May 7th, officially, everywhere, and also you can go to suckatsomething.com and what I'm hoping happens is that the audience will share their stories and then I suck at social media so I'm just trying to figure this out but I have a Facebook group that I've just created and it's by invitation and I'm figuring out just please, we can figure out a way for you to join. I should have an answer to this but I'm getting help on the social media side but what I'm hoping is that people will share their stories. So via the website, karinaldi.com is my author website but suckatsomething.com is where this idea lives. All right, well thanks for being here today. As you know, we have an audience question before we send it off, okay. All right, and you don't have to answer this one. Jane Chester Weisbecker on Facebook asks, is there any difference in the various sweet potatoes? Are some better for us than others? Oh, that's a tough question. Actually, it's a pretty easy question. Karin won't remember but when I was writing The Plant Paradox, I actually had about four pages explaining the difference between a yam and a sweet potato and because initially we banned sweet potatoes, the orange guys because, and I won't go into it today but they're different than yams. One's a morning glory and one's a lily and we used to eat yams in Africa and morning glories are from the United States but anyhow, it got so confusing and so long that Julie, my editor, Julie, well, we both said, this is ridiculous, you can eat yams and sweet potatoes and we won't worry about it. My favorite sweet potato, answer your question, find the Japanese blue or purple sweet potatoes. They are becoming far more prevalent in stores. We actually have them in regular grocery stores here in California now. The anthocyanins, that pigment is one of the best polyphenols to get in your mouth so that's my tip. If you can't find that, the ugly skinny ones that kind of have the white color inside are actually usually yams and they're actually better for you than the sweet potatoes and they're usually mislabeled in the grocery store so that's why we quit trying to talk about it. All right, so that's it for this episode of the Dr. Gundry podcast. I hope we didn't suck at it, but if we did right, I wanna know because I'm actor Gundry and I'm always looking out for you.